Steve Wilder

Feature Article from Hemmings Sports & Exotic Car

I guess you could say I had a love/hate relationship with Steve Wilder. I don't think he ever had a harsh thought about me, although I fired him from a job he enjoyed. But afterward, Wilder was the quintessence of consideration. When I bought a Moretti, Steve popped up with a bottle of Moretti beer. Knowing I was nuts about the Lancia D50, he gave me a kit to build one. And when he saw an article he thought would interest me, as he did earlier this year, Steve let me know.
I shared an MIT engineering education with Stephen F. Wilder, although unlike me, he graduated, indeed with honors. Steve served with the U.S. Army in Europe in the early 1950s. He stayed on for a while in Britain, getting involved with the Porsches that were then exciting fellow enthusiasts like photographer Jesse Alexander and journalist Denis Jenkinson.
Jenkinson in particular enjoyed hanging out with Wilder because, as Jenks put it, he was "a good practical fellow who could whip a Porsche engine out by the roadside and fix it if need be." That this was no idle claim was proven in the Nürburgring paddock, after Jenkinson's 356A broke its transaxle mounting. There "we dropped the engine and gearbox out and renewed the rubber mounting, and for that sort of job 'in the field,' Steve was an ace."
Wilder spared the horses on neither road nor track. Before going into the Army, he raced in California with a Porsche-powered VW Beetle. He pedaled his black 1500 Super coupe in British races in 1955 and '56, taking pleasure in beating the 2-liter Triumphs with half a liter less. He also upended his Porsche on the road, Jenkinson related. Steve mentioned an English hilltop where a sign said, "Accident Black Spot--27 accidents have taken place here." "Gee," the sandy-haired Wilder told Jenks with his wide grin, "I guess the council guy is changing it to 28 right now!"
After returning to the States, Steve bought one of Colin Chapman's first single-seater Lotuses, a Climax-powered Mark 12. To enter it, he set up the 5th Avenue Racing Team, the acronym of which amused him. Wilder was, in fact, an entrant for the first modern United States Grand Prix at Sebring in 1959, but his car didn't arrive in time.
Steve was testing his Lotus at Lime Rock Park when he had a heavy crash that he was lucky to survive. This marked the end of his competitive ambitions. "You know how when you're driving very fast," he told me, "a little warning sign comes up that you're about to overdo it? That you should back off the throttle? Well, I don't seem to have that." Some drivers don't, and like Wilder, they're wise to retire from racing before they're crippled, or worse.
Steve and I hooked up when I left my job as technical editor of Sports Cars Illustrated to go into the Army in 1957. Editor John Christy had seen some pieces Steve had written for Road & Track that qualified him for the job. The problems arose when I came back from my stint in the Signal Corps to take over from Christy as Wilder's boss. This didn't sit very well with the several-years-older man.
From my time working with Steve, I formulated one of my axioms, which is that the person living closest to any destination always gets there last. Wilder lived close to One Park Avenue but was invariably late. It was also like pulling teeth to extract copy from him. Thus when I discovered Jan Norbye, I hired him to take Steve's place. The incumbent fought back, saying, "Why won't you judge me by what I'm saying, not by what I'm doing?" I'd have preferred it the other way around.
After Car and Driver, Steve developed fascinating parallel careers. He became a technical advisor to the New York City Taxi Commission. He also set up Suspensions International Inc. to work as a consultant. The latter was the vehicle for his most spectacular venture, his takeover of the foundering Griffith GT sports-car project and its rebirth in 1966 as the Omega. On this, he spent what David E. Davis, Jr., called "quite a lot of nice old New England money," hiring Charlotte's Holman-Moody to build and rectify some three dozen cars that were in the pipeline.
"Our man Wilder got serious about the GT car business," added Davis. "He spent more money than he'd ever dreamed he could. He worked hard. He hassled and negotiated." He saw great potential in the Ford-powered sports coupe, built in Italy by Intermeccanica to a design by Bob Cumberford productionized by Franco Scaglione. Wilder is credited by experts with the output of 33 Omegas. That's 33 more cars than most of us will ever have a chance to manufacture.
With, as Davis wrote, "a personality that is charming to a fare-thee-well," Steve Wilder was also preternaturally bright. Speakers at meetings of the International Motor Press Association could count on being skewered by a Wilder comment or question. He was a shining ornament to our amazing world of the automobile. And if I write about Steve in the past tense, it's because prostate cancer finally caught up with him in November of 2005. That was one challenger he couldn't.

This article originally appeared in the March, 2006 issue of Hemmings Sports & Exotic Car.